School Buses

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (15:14): I rise this afternoon to provide to the house some further information, building on a grievance that I raised last parliamentary sitting in relation to school bus services provided by Link SA in the Barossa Valley and surrounds. Since my last speech I have received a further list of issues from concerned parents about conduct that they do not consider appropriate. Indeed, the subsequent media attention did bring a flurry of activity not only to my office but also to the college.

I also have reason now to question Link SA's accuracy in recording the number of students who catch the bus, which in turn is used to collect a government subsidy. I have seen two manifests, one from March last year and one from August last year, that are riddled with errors. They detail students who either have graduated or did not go to school during that period. In total from this sample manifest, 10 students are wrongly identified. The issue with this comes from the fact that Link SA failed to update its manifest on advice from Faith Lutheran College about student enrolments.

As Faith does not reconcile all manifests, there are serious questions as to whether Link SA is claiming subsidies from the government for students who no longer go to the college. The questions are further compounded when accounts reported to me state that drivers are not checking students off the manifest. Indeed, without doing this, there is no way that Link SA can accurately assess what the correct subsidy to claim is.

I am strongly urging the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure to conduct an audit of Link SA subsidy claims to ensure that there has been no fraud or wrongdoing in this case. I find this matter extremely serious. From everything that I have been able to understand, there is a shortfall in the reconciliation of these claims, and it is something that genuinely and seriously needs to be looked at in a holistic manner.

In addition to this, I have also received a large number of other complaints. I have heard a complaint and seen a video of a bus driver who drove the bus with the door open and failed to signal even when driving in a 90-kilometre zone. I have seen instances where a senior manager of Link SA has been driving behind buses, picking up students that the bus driver has left behind. I have heard of instances where children are not attending school, and cannot attend school, because the bus fails to pick them up and the parents cannot get them to school, having potentially already gone off to work.

I have reports of Link SA not responding to parent complaints or, when they do so, doing it in a pro forma manner that leaves little confidence about whether investigations have actually occurred. I have instances where parents are now actually trying to organise their own bus because they have so little faith in Link SA's ability to provide a decent service. Indeed, the day after my last speech on this topic in this place, the Kersbrook route leading towards Faith showed up about an hour late, leaving students stranded with only belated contact from Link SA to Faith, meaning we had students waiting on the corner of often busy high-speed roads, unsure of what was going on and no timely contact from Link SA.

I have also had contact from parents on a different route, whose children go to a different high school. They detailed to me in a very contemporaneous way issues around the conduct of a driver who continually swears at students and who drives erratically and too fast, especially when this driver is running late. This driver does not charge fares correctly and, indeed, sometimes does not charge fares at all and in other instances questions the authenticity of bus passes and tickets provided. From the last time I spoke on this issue to this time, with the added information, the sheer volume of complaints leads me to believe that there is a serious issue with the bus service that is being provided.

This is not something that I bring to the house lightly and I understand the gravity of what I have said in the chamber, but the students of the Barossa Valley need to have confidence in their bus service and they need to have a bus service provided by a contractor that will honour the duty of care that it owes to them.